Happy Freaking Friday Friends & Digital Neighbors! I hope it has been a good week for you. Well you finally made it to Friday, for you retired people, welcome to fourth Tuesday if it resets on a weekly basis or Infinite NEXTTUESDAY for those of you who never reset the weekly calendar.
Today's post is brought to you by the Letter C, prolonged sleep deprivation and a big mug of coffee. Off to Epic English Words and the wonderful compilation by Mr. Robin Devoe!
Cacafuego - a person with a hot temper; one prone to bragging [from the nickname of a Spanish galleon - literally fire-shitter] 🔥💩
Poopie words - almost as fun a repeatedly writing boob repeatedly in the early hours of the morning. On a serious note, if you are easily angered, you are easily controlled. It is almost as easy as using fear to control people. Covid fear bubbled into Floyd fever. Weeks of sheltering in place doing your heroic part can take a toll on the best of us. Few can brave weeks of dramatic self-indulgence and Tiger King without being energized for the upcoming battles that await you. Floyd fever was the best way to pivot from Covid fear to joining the ranks of the cacafuego. Fighting against racism requires, arson, vandalism and a ready supply of media cameras to interview the most outlandish and yet still coherent spokesperson for your fire-shitting cause. The Ferguson Effect not a only applies to a lack a response of law enforcement to scenes of "mostly peaceful protest" but also a normalizing of the destruction of small businesses and neighborhoods all for the glory of the narrative. Burning down the present to prepare for a better future usually involves a willingness to dispense with the rights of those who can't be reconditioned as a puppet for the next fever.
Catadromous - moving from fresh water to salt water to spawn; the opposite of anadromous
We all have are center that is our normal be it a liberal, conservative, libertarian, anarchist, engaged or indifferent approach to life. There are more centers, but those are the most common we see in public. Can fish inspire us to be more malleable? We have point-of-view that is home for us, but can we be open to adjacent areas where ideas not natural to us can be considered and potential adopted? Not all ideas are equal, some are stupid and many are bad.
Field testing and the fruitfulness of ideas should be their measure. Communism sounds promising when one only sees an equal sharing of goods, sadly it doesn't work with human nature and the road to such a dream is the path of death and destruction. Utopia is the next chapter, but first there is the really, really, really ugly one. Socialism, communism's ugly sister, that dresses better and takes three times as long to turn into a crazy date. Capitalism is not without its faults, no economic system can overcome all the faults of human nature, some do a better job of trying to manage and moderate the extremes. Happy Friday Friends!
Spring beauty on the farm by Lynn Bauer
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
